A friend of presidents, industrialists, and statesmen… A sailor whose career began on coal fired steamships but went on to witness the surrender of Japan following the use of the first atomic bomb… A pilot who became the first man to fly over the North and South Poles, and an admiral who charted a landmass fully half the size of the United States itself… Admiral Richard E. Byrd was one of the world’s last great explorers.
You might not know his name, but without Carl Vinson, the world, and certainly the US Navy, might have been vastly different.